ABSTRACT
For nearly a decade, Syria’s involvement in Lebanon has been a focal point of the Ba’athist regime’s foreign policies and domestic politics. The course of Syria’s policy in Lebanon, originally shrouded in secrecy and controversy, has been traced and reconstructed, at least in its broad lines, in earlier works. Attention can now be shifted to an effort to place Syria’s conduct in Lebanon in the larger context of the country’s politics. As its title implies, this chapter views Syria’s policy in Lebanon as a defined issue: as a reflection of the regime’s priorities and capabilities and as an instrument calculated to accomplish additional, far more ambitious, purposes. It also suggests that the relative importance of the country’s alternative preferences has changed several times during the past decade.
